I saw in the atelier of the painter Ary Scheffer, in 1845, an admirable picture of St. Augustine and his mother Monica. The two figures, not quite full length, are seated; she holds his hand in both hers, looking up to heaven with an expression of enthusiastic undoubting faith;— ‘the son of so many tears cannot be cast away!’ He also is looking up with an ardent, eager, but anxious, doubtful expression, which seems to say, ‘Help thou my unbelief!’ For profound and truthful feeling and significance, I know few things in the compass of modern Art that can be compared to this picture.[285] ST. GREGORY. _Lat._ Sanctus Gregorius Magnus. _Ital._ San Gregorio Magno or Papa. _Fr._ St. Grégoire. _Ger._ Der Heilige Gregor. (March 12, A.D. 604.) The fourth Doctor of the Latin Church, St. Gregory, styled, and not without reason, Gregory the Great, was one of those extraordinary men whose influence is not only felt in their own time, but through long succeeding ages. The events of his troubled and splendid pontificate belong to history; and I shall merely throw together here such particulars of his life and character as may serve to render the multiplied representations of him both intelligible and interesting. He was born at Rome in the year 540. His father, Gordian, was of senatorial rank: his mother, Sylvia, who, in the history of St. Gregory, is almost as important as St. Monica in the story of St. Augustine, was a woman of rare endowments, and, during his childish years, the watchful instructress of her son. It is recorded that when he was still an infant she was favoured by a vision of St. Antony, in which he promised to her son the supreme dignity of the tiara. Gregory, however, commenced his career in life as a lawyer, and exercised during twelve years the office of prætor or chief magistrate of his native city; yet, while apparently engrossed by secular affairs, he became deeply imbued with the religious enthusiasm which was characteristic of his time and hereditary in his family. Immediately on the death of his father he devoted all the wealth he had inherited to pious and charitable purposes, converted his paternal home on the Celian Hill into a monastery and hospital for the poor, which he dedicated to St. Andrew: then, retiring to a little cell within it, he took the habit of the Benedictine Order, and gave up all his time to study and preparation for the duties to which he had devoted himself. On the occasion of a terrific plague which almost depopulated Rome, he fearlessly undertook the care of the poor and sick. Pope Pelagius having died at this time, the people with one voice called upon Gregory to succeed him: but he shrank from the high office, and wrote to the Emperor Maurice, entreating him not to ratify the choice of the people. The emperor sent an edict confirming his election, and thereupon Gregory fled from Rome, and bid himself in a cave. Those who went